Fresh Off the Boat: Rob Riggle plays Gator Dan in exclusive first look at season 2

Rob Riggle will certainly play to type in an upcoming episode of Fresh Off the Boat.

When the ABC comedy returns in the fall, the Daily Show alum will guest-star as Gator Dan, a Gator World employee who takes his job “very seriously,” says the network. Very seriously, as Riggle’s crazy eyes in exclusive first-look photos of his FOTB debut can attest.

Gator Dan makes his appearance when the Huang family goes on a family vacation, thanks to the success of their restaurant, Cattleman’s Ranch.

Michael Ansell/ABC

In a conversation with EW, showrunner Nahnatcha Khan says that Fresh Off the Boat will continue to explore what it’s like for a first-generation immigrant family to experience all that America has to offer. A first-generation kid herself — her parents were born in Iran — Khan says that the concept of family vacations was foreign to her growing up. “My family never took vacations growing up. It just wasn’t a thing. It’s something that’s almost taken for granted in sitcoms about white families,” says Khan. “Like, ‘Oh, we’re going on a summer vacation!’ As if that’s something that everybody does.”

It’s by taking these familiar subjects — even something as seemingly benign as a family vacation — and viewing them through a specific lens that we can understand the Huang family, says Khan, and what it means to be different. And, apparently, how to escape interactions with really intense theme park employees as unscathed as possible.